


The Charioteer’s Wife

by filia_noctis



Category: Macbeth - Shakespeare, Mahabharata - Vyasa
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-10
Updated: 2014-12-10
Packaged: 2018-02-28 22:01:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2748716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/filia_noctis/pseuds/filia_noctis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tragedy in one act, in verse (mostly), located sometime just before Kurukshetra, just after Krishna's famous attempt of luring Karna over to the Pandava-side, where Krishna-as-Mohini decides to pay Radha, Karna's foster mother, three visits in one night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Charioteer’s Wife

**Author's Note:**

> This was a mad project to begin with. Which is another way of saying it is DEFINITELY riddled with incoherence(s), so bear with me. I was supposed to try my hand at a tragedy so perfect in the Aristotelian form that the man himself would weep. Didn't work. I have bungled the space-time unity thing awfully by putting Lady Macbeth in it. The man, I'm sure, IS weeping, unless he is familiar with the L-space. In case it bothers you too much, the good news is, Lady Macbeth has a very fleeting presence. If you ignore her existence (and that of an L-space), the reading shouldn't suffer. My sincere apologies for the brashness, the many liberties, the bad poetry. 
> 
> Please note,the choral verses have been largely adapted from Seven Jewish Children, a play for Gaza by Caryl Churchill. (www.nickhernbooks.co.uk March,2009)  
> Lady Macbeth’s dialogues are almost entirely quoted from the play Macbeth, by William Shakespeare.

Dramatis Personae

Krishna/Mohini Lord Vishnu incarnate.Friend and ally of the Pandavas, particularly Arjun. In popular mythology, Mohini is often his only female avatar, and is canonically described a femme fatale, "an enchantress".

Radha Adhiratha’s wife, foster mother of Karna

Chorus Royal wives of the Bharata dynasty of Hastinapur: Gandhari, Kunti, Draupadi, Subhadra, Bhanumati

In a ‘different trouser of time’ as Pratchett would have called it,

Lady Macbeth wife of Macbeth, Thane of Cawdor, later King of Scotland. Shakespearen heroine

 

Glossary of people mentioned:  
Vasusena/Radheya/Karna: the son of the Sun God borne by Kunti before her marriage to Pandu, king of Hastinapur. He was found and fostered by Hastinapur’s royal charioteer Adhirath and his wife, Radha.His lifelong friendship with and loyalty to Duryodhana is legendary. He is called Radheya as he is the son of Radha, his foster mother, and Vasusena, as he has the build of a glorious warrior and was born with the protective golden armour and ringlets.  
Pandavas/Kaunteyas: Sons of Kunti and Madri, fathered by gods , adopted by Pandu, respectively: Yudishthir, Bheem, Arjun, Nakul, and Sahadev  
Panchaali: Draupadi, princess of Panchal  
Kuruclan : Sons of Dhritarashtra and their allies  
Moon clan/ Bharata dynasty: the ruling dynasty of Hastinapur

 

PROLOGOS

Krishna: The windswept Kurukshetra has lost its wind  
Too many camp to kill  
Cramped breathing spaces heave with war  
To sate the Kuru will.

No land worth even a needle-point  
No land worth Bharata seal  
All hide and seek stands over now  
We owe war; the elders reel.

Kaunteyas insist they look for peace  
In blood they must it seek  
I plead harmony in their behalf  
And invoke a bloodbath’s reek.

Too many clamour for the Moon clan rights  
Too many litter the earth  
Too many sins to butcher and knife  
A war still has its worth

Petitions and politics must endure  
I know who most I prize  
To have the Kurus carrioned thus  
Let’s call it Divine contrive!

Seven days hence  
They broach their arms  
The Great War of our times  
Where great men fall,  
While little ones die  
Lost faith accounts lost crimes.

Then let it start, and Odin feast  
And warlords crusade for sin  
Let blood feud end, and man be bled  
Let the purgation begin.

.....  
One broken link the pattern has  
One mislived live—a woe  
One unacknowledged err ratified  
And Arjun loses a foe.

Yet  
He refuses formal knowledge this late  
He’d forsake kin for kith

He seeks no redemption in family seal  
For him no parley, no golden wreath.  
Not anymore—but glorious waste  
Upon our cudgels his burdens rest  
He will fight the losing war.

Not for him the elder’s right  
The throne, the sceptre, the Pandava might  
Even Panchali fades afar.

Duryodhan retains a friend  
Kunti’s pleadings, my futile entreat—  
Are refuted all in a bittersweet feat—  
Karna likes his hemlock neat.  
Karna likes his hemlock neat.

PARADOS

Chorus: Tell her it’s a game  
Tell her it’s serious  
But don’t frighten her  
Don’t tell her they’ll kill him  
Tell her something about the men  
Tell her they are bad at the game  
Tell her it’s a story  
Tell her they’ll go away  
Tell her he can make them go away  
By magic!  
Tell her more when she’s older  
Tell her how many when she is older  
Tell her we love him  
Tell her dead or alive his family will love him

But not today.

EPISODE 1  
[Radha’s bedchamber.Midnight.]

Radha: Lonely I have always been, afraid I am of late.  
The outside’s busy breeding a war, the inside emptiness.  
The palace comforts fail to soothe  
All the maids fail to please,  
This can’t be easy, I can’t not worry, kingship is a disease!  
Yet ten and five years have passed thus,  
Now my son is a seasoned king.  
The fight (not always fair, not always just, I know) is near as old as him.  
Nursemaids and sweepers whisper anon ‘a rightful war’  
My son in the council screams  
My grandchildren scream in their sleeps  
Their mothers, terrified, poor little things—  
Never queenly material , the girls we picked for him  
From homes just like ours—  
Now look around like haunted pets  
In this strange place, this golden cage  
While clocks in the threshold gleam.

The friendship’s worth its friendly salt  
Yet either one could win  
As long as my boy returns safe  
To his own kith and kin.

[Enter Mohini]

The hour ’tis late, the household sleeps.  
A worried old crone can ramble yet,  
Yet, who are you child? What brings you here?  
The face is new, my vision unsure  
What purpose have thee hence?

Mohini: Brace yourself Mother, the news isn’t good  
The omens are at odds.  
Anga will need a new king ere this fortnight ends.  
I come from powers higher borne  
Indeed they embody me  
And needst assure this woeful fact

Am word bound to tell thee.  
Your son will die a valiant man  
But also grossly wronged  
The curses invoked, the wrongs steeped  
Will work, will rage  
While fates wage  
While his mothers mourn, his family throngs.  
Such is the will, such is his fate.  
Such is writ as law.

Radha: Hush child! Worry makes you sour!  
Which one of the council is your man  
What fears leave you so ill-borne?  
Ill words are ill guests.  
And you a princess (or so I guess,  
Matronly you seem not)  
Are you spoken for?  
Does your man fight along with your kin?  
Nightmares tread all our sleeps’ march  
We cannot rest we cannot scar  
Or affect our men’s prowess.  
Fear not, sweet royal child  
They say the war is mighty right.  
I hope they’re sure of their words.  
Though which war is right I cannot tell  
This one might be, they do foretell.  
Queen-Mother I have not always been  
I have lost close ones in thatched huts—beloveds,neighbours, friends  
Whose names they forgot  
Yet whose fighting they did need.  
In royal stones, you chance best  
Your man may remain behind the rest  
And tells them what to do.  
Thus sleep, rest, return to bed  
Keep senses in this strife  
Placate you I cannot but trust  
Believe in the charioteer’s wife.

Mohini: Your words have the sound of a clear brook, sans flares and fancy, sighs and rust!  
Were I what you think I am, you would have left me soothed.  
Yet Mother! Little girl! Mistake me not.  
Toil and trouble bubble over my shawl, my caresses fates divine.  
Some call me Fate , some witchery, some mere Bad Girl  
But false I am not.  
Terrible I might be to your men, terrible I am not to you.  
I hold nothing but the truth; am sad to deliver the anvil’s brute  
Strength, but Mother! What I say is true.

Radha: Repeat it then. Mercy I scorn at for the cruelty insipid.  
If cruel Fate is indeed my guest, I demand to know the story’s rest.

Mohini:Vasusena, son of Vaskar and Kunti

Radha:

Mohini: Will lead Duryodhana’s troops  
And die the twelfth day  
Slain by Arjun in an unjust move  
While he strives to pull a chariot wheel—his last defence  
Against Parashuram’s curse: the gift for stupendous pain,  
Krishna’s goading, the killer’s rage.  
He will have machined himself by then  
And killed a copious lot  
Fierce and brute : a Viking’s moot  
The Sun God humane wrought.

He will go to the warrior’s heaven  
Of that there is no doubt  
Yet, this is true  
This is how it stands  
Mother! Prepare the shroud.

Radha: Why so merciful, dear child?  
(For child I will call you yet)  
It wrecks my heart  
Yet to feign surprise!  
Yet wrong, wrong did you say?  
My poor boy, oh my poor boy  
You are felled ere you rise!  
Why do I live to see these days?  
Why do I live to know?  
How do I right this terrible wrong?  
How do I fair this show?  
To wish no ambition but a quiet life, but  
You would have died yet,instead  
While driving great men to their fall  
Ignoble death you wouldn’t tread.  
Death, though hard, might yet be borne  
I am a warrior’s Ma  
Yet to see their wrongs, all lifelong day  
And see some more at dusk as dawn  
Amid empty life and glories shorn  
While I live on to see you die  
And chariots fail and warriors vie—

Mohini: Yet, the prospect’s not all black  
He can be redeemed, revived, reclaimed  
Chances are not what you lack.  
I have come to you to inform thee  
Why? Ask yourself that  
Pre-emptives are primitive to man  
There’s no end to what a woman can  
Reflect, I prithee.

[Mohini exits.Enter Lady Macbeth.]

Lady Macbeth: Hecate I have traced so far, old mother,  
‘You seen her? For here she were or felt she were.  
Was she here?

Radha: I don’t  
Know child. One child was here.  
Strange words she left me,  
My vision’s unsure  
I know not what you call.

Lady Macbeth: Oh remember! Do!  
Her prophecies work!  
My husband ‘s a Thane, but weak–mettled so  
I must seek her, know , privy her  
He deserves to be a king!

Radha: Strange child, I know not what you mean—  
Hark! Her prophecies work? You have so seen?  
She says I may lose my son to wrong,  
And wrongful vengeance, battling strong,  
Yet she says there is respite

Lady Macbeth: Old mother, then spite  
The agents, make her say  
For she will surely return this day  
(they always do if evoked)  
Unlash fury, unlash wrath!  
I for my lord, you Mother for your lot  
Let none escape the slay!  
Hark! I think that’s her!

[Lady Macbeth exits chiming:]

Lady Macbeth: Come to my women’s breasts,  
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,  
Wherever in your sightless substances  
You wait on nature’s mischief!

Radha: Let Gods aid my rusty will, if she can do it  
So can I, banal passion decrees love’s right.  
Not my blood, ‘tis true, but he is my bone  
Radheya will live, despite the fight.  
Oh heavens! See me through.

First Stasimon:

Chorus:Don’t tell her he will go forever  
Tell her she can write to him, tell her his friends can maybe come and visit  
Tell her it is sunny there  
Tell her he is going home  
Tell her it’s the land God meant to give him  
Don’t tell her classes  
Tell her his great great lots of greats granddad lived there  
Don’t tell her he was once driven out.  
Don’t tell her he doesn’t belong there  
Tell her of course he likes it here, but he’ll like it there even more  
Tell her it’s an adventure  
Tell her nobody will tease him  
Tell her he is a special man  
Tell her about his brothers.

EPISODE 2  
[Radha’s chamber.The third quarter of the night.]

Radha: Wearied as never before  
Yet I don’t know what to do. Will I, nill I  
Call him back?  
Radheya loves his mother enough to be called Radheya by the world,  
Looked down and laughed by his.  
This charioteer’s wife is always obeyed  
Yet  
Duryodhan has been the fairest friend, the generous brother, the spoilt child  
The good prince-regent who has reigned the world for most these years  
While Kaunteya brothers roam the woods with their father and alone.  
They say he refutes their right to throne,  
They are Kaunteuyas, not Pandu’s blood  
Not Kuru thereof to claim the throne  
He may be right, he may be wrong  
But his subjects love him  
His family and friends bask  
Their protection secured and manned this long.

The protector  
Made my Vasusena what he is  
What he deserves—king, friend and ally.  
How do I ask him to refute such friendship at such an hour?  
If they believe the Kounteyas are wrong  
(Yet then my boy fights his blood, how’s that right?)  
That war is the cleanest, best resolve—  
How are they wrong?  
What can I do to save their plight?  
Duryodhan we won’t refuse.  
Not this late an hour shall see  
Sweet loyalty retrace back  
In shadowed looms, and diffuse  
Else I might kill my son!

[Mohini returns.]

Mohini: Mother, you have but one choice,  
The Kurus lose: it has been ordained  
The Pandavas survive to rule.  
For Karna to survive,  
He ought join the rightful side.

Radha: How rightful are the rightful, child?  
What right makes them proclaim  
And write the fates of all our boys  
In dreadful, coarse, dead shame?  
Lores I have sung as a girl  
I know how heroes are defined  
The winner of this war will win for all  
The defeated vilified.  
What right is it that decides how  
Which killing is righteously done?  
How rightful are the rightful child?  
What is this conundrum?

Mohini: The gods support the Kaunteya will  
I as Krishna do.  
Endorse Karna as Kaunteya and  
All other fates veto.  
As Kunti suggests, as I entreat  
Make him join the Pandava wings  
He gets to live, to lead, and be loved by blood  
He gets to be the king.  
Duryodhan is the better friend, and family’s been obscure  
Yet the final choice may save your son  
A new mother is the cure.

Radha: Sell him for life? To be Kunti’s eldest?

Mohini: He has always been her first. He gets to live and be glorious and terrible and everything he deserves—so much more than he ever gets from the Kuru clan!  
Selfish mother! You want him dead rather than acknowledged by the rightful mother, the rightful clan?

Radha: Rightful Kunti who wronged my son by denying him a name  
Too proud too noble to confess a rape, he was wronged in her shame!  
He was wronged for floating down to us,he was wronged for calling me ‘Ma’  
He was wronged for tasting his clan’s life, and refusing to depart!  
He was wronged as a child, at manhood, in youth, for sneaking more from life  
You called him a charioteer’s son, when you denied him a wife  
He bears mocking though he’s born as high, his blood as blue as you,  
His skill, his deeds, his loyalty all lost—true, but never quite true  
And now you say the bygone’s past, the breach be met for gain  
His Kaunteya roots hold true at last, so that a Kuru mayn’t reign?

Mohini: But he gets to live, and live gloriously a perfect life.  
Relegate your claims Mother! Let the errors be rectified.  
Ask him to join the Pandavas, ask him to lead  
After defeating his former benefactor he gets all that he seeks.  
You may see him reign in his own right, as the rightful owner of states,  
You may see Draupadi wife him at last, besides her Pandava mates.  
Step aside, let Kunti in, help him to be great  
‘A charioteer’s son’ is too petty a tag  
But act fast! You’re running late.

Radha: Everyone knows how my son was born.  
Yet no word was uttered aloud.  
You choose today to end your whispers  
For the sake of your beloved clout!  
You don’t tell the rest of the Kounteyas either.  
You keep them in ignorance, out of sin.  
With such allies as you, no wonder  
Their righteous souls are clean

Too late a justice, too many errors are done  
Too many scars remain  
My boy will never abandon the Kuru clan  
Sorceress! Don’t invite such disdain!

Mohini: You can make him, I can help.  
You want your son alive.  
And don’t forget,  
If he lives, he lives  
A happy man, sans strife.

I will return once yet  
At dawn to you,  
But that will be the last  
Post that, the prospect’s black  
I can help, but you ought act fast!

[Mohini exits]

SECOND STASIMON  
Chorus: Tell her not to be rude to them  
Tell her not to be frightened  
Don’t tell her she can’t play with the children  
Don’t tell her she can have them in the house.  
Tell her they have plenty of friends and family  
Tell her for miles and miles all round they have lands of their own  
Tell her again this is their promised land.  
Don’t tell her they said it was a land without people  
Don’t tell her they had to burn a forest and bribe a demon  
Don’t tell her I wouldn’t have come if I’d known.  
Tell her they will win  
Tell her his brothers are heroes  
Tell her how big their armies are  
Tell her they are fighters  
Tell her he will be fine  
Tell her maybe we can share.

Don’t tell her that.

 

[Radha’s chamber. Dawn.]

Mohini: Decided Mother?  
Shall I invoke the spell?  
The will of Gods can trick.

Radha: What a night!  
For a crone, what a night to sneak!  
Yet, child, don’t you like the dawn  
There, you can see my son!  
He meets his father there  
While the blinding light the world shuns—

Mohini: Mother, won’t you act?

Radha: No.  
I am a silly old charioteer’s wife  
Too lowly for the likes of thee  
Perhaps thus I have lost my grim  
I won’t lose this, this quiet joy, even if  
I see my son laid,  
Return child, I will not decide  
That decision’s made.  
It’s the wrong choice, perhaps it is  
But no righteous choice exists  
For me, I’d rather die  
Than trick him into what he resists.

Mohini: And you won’t change your mind? My tricks fail Mother, I can’t act for you.

Radha: Don’t.

[Enter Lady Macbeth.]

Lady Macbeth (to herself, sleepwalking): Out, damned spot! out, I say!--One: two: why,  
then, 'tis time to do't.--Hell is murky!--Fie, my  
lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we  
fear who knows it, when none can call our power to  
account?--Yet who would have thought the old man  
to have had so much blood in him...What, will these hands ne'er be clean?--No more o'  
that, my lord, no more o' that: you mar all with  
this starting.

Radha: Bewitched?

Mohini: Bewitched.  
The trick is simple Ma, I just tell them what may come. They do the rest.

Radha: I won’t.

Mohini: I know.

Radha:It is but a few days more that I get to see him smile  
I get to see him walk the court  
While my grandchildren trail behind  
I get to see him eat, to talk  
I get to hear him speak  
I get to see him be alive  
Before the days grow bleak  
I can touch him now and smell his sweat  
I can recall his follies in style  
While the children laugh and the wives relax  
My son smiles at my wrinkled rile.  
A few more days and I lose him,  
I lose him anyway  
Whether he is the Pandava king  
Or has had one too many to slay  
In a few days time its war for him  
The war he is bound to lose  
And die, so many boys will die  
No hangman owns his noose.  
He will leave, but the loss will stay  
No shame should make it smart  
I might as well see him happy his way  
Before the war march starts.

EXODUS  
Chorus: Don’t tell her anything she doesn’t ask  
Don’t frighten her  
Tell her they want to drive us out  
Tell her they don’t  
Tell her we will kill far more of them  
Don’t tell her that  
Tell her that  
Tell her we are stronger  
Tell her we are entitled  
Tell her they don’t understand anything except violence  
Tell her we want peace  
Tell her we are going to pray.  
Tell her only a few of us have been killed  
Tell her we protect what is good  
Don’t tell her how many of them have been killed  
Tell her they are terrorists  
Tell her they are filth  
Don’t  
Tell her we killed the babies by mistake  
Don’t tell her anything about the army  
Tell her, tell her about the army, tell her to be proud of the army. Tell her she’s got nothing to be ashamed of. Tell her they did it to themselves. Tell her I’m not sorry for them, tell her not to be sorry for them. Tell her we’re the ones to be sorry for, tell her they can’t talk suffering to us. Tell her we won’t stop killing them till we’re safe. Tell her I don’t care if the world hates us, tell her we are better haters, tell her we are the chosen people, tell her I look atthe mourning women in the street and what do I feel? Tell her I feel happy they needn’t enter her house. Not yet.  
Don’t tell her that.  
Tell her we love him.  
Don’t frighten her.  
-/-


End file.
